AF3e Status, 17 July 2017

For those who are watching me write the third edition of “Absolute FreeBSD,” here’s where things stand.

It’s at 77,400 words. 7 of 24 chapters exist [edit: oops, typo, not “chapter sexist,” spellcheckers are useless] as first drafts. Three more chapters are partially finished.

The current outline looks like this. Chapter titles subject to change. For reference, the ideal chapter length of a No Starch book is about 5000 words.

0 – Introduction (7500 words, d1 done)
1 – Getting More Help
2 – Pre-Install Considerations (4900 words)
3 – Installing (write last, because screenshots are evil)
4 – Booting (8300 words, SOL hates me)
5 – Backups
6 – Kernel
7 – Networking (8800 words, d1 done)
8 – Configuring Ethernet (7700 words, d1 done)
9 – Security
10 – Partitioning & GEOM (10700 words, d1 done)
11 – UFS (8000 words)
12 – ZFS
13 – Other Filesystems
14 – More Security
15 – /etc
16 – Packages (8600 words, d1 done)
17 – Ports (6800 words, d1 done)
18 – Software Management
19 – Upgrading
20 – Small System Services
21 – Performance
22 – Jails (6100 words, d1 done)
23 – Misc Crap
24 – Panics & Bugs
Afterword

Why write in this order?

When writing a large book, I always write the hard parts first. This means the book gets easier as it goes on. I don’t waste time or energy dreading That Topic.

It also means that I can write the really easy stuff when I literally cannot write the difficult stuff. I went to London, Ontario last weekend and was able to spend a few hours writing. I didn’t have my test lab, but I could sit on the front porch and write the Introduction.

Some of these chapters are difficult because of the research and testing. IPMI Serial over LAN is really ticking me off right now. I’m sure there’s a minor setting that I’m missing, and that once I find it everything will fall into place. Finding that setting will tell me what I don’t know, and let me explain and provide context. People buy my books for context. So, the product here is my frustration and suffering.

Some of these chapters are difficult because I’ve done too much research. I get a chapter on ZFS? Cool. But Allan Jude and I wrote two entire books on ZFS. Distilling that down to one-sixteenth the length, while providing context, and not shamelessly shilling those two books? Ugh.

Why these topics?

Because that’s what FreeBSD sysadmins must know.

Some of you will ask “where is bhyve?” Fair question. The bhyve developers are actively rototilling bhyve configuration. If I write a bhyve chapter now, it will be obsolete before the book hits print. That’s bad Including a bhyve chapter depends entirely on the bhyve devs.

If the bhyve devs settle on a configuration before the end of October, I’ll squeeze a chapter in after the jails chapter.

If they don’t, then you’ll have to wait for FreeBSD Mastery: Bhyve.

Get My Books Cheap

A novel and a story, at least.

I was recently invited into two different book bundles, where you can get a whole bunch of books by different authors at a cheap price. A bundle is pretty much a sampler pack of similar stuff.

If you’ve read my fiction and liked it, here’s your chance to discover a bunch of new authors in my genres.

If you haven’t read my fiction, here’s a chance to inexpensively try it and a bunch of other stuff.

First up is the Sci-Fi July bundle.

Sci-fi July Fever Fun

It’s eleven novels, including my Montague Portal novel Hydrogen Sleets. The heroine, Aidan Redding, is a redshirt who keeps getting stuck in situations that should slaughter redshirts. No matter how I try, though, I just can’t kill that woman. She’s tough, yes, but better still: she’s smart. Smarter than I am, at least.

Second we have the Crimes, Capers, and Rule-Breakers bundle, that includes my story Butterfly Stomp. It’s on pre-order now for only $0.99.

Crimes, Capers, & Rule-Breakers

I love crime. Well, reading about crime. Fictional crime, not Oracle. As a writer, Beaks is one of those characters that wandered in off the street and said “I’m a horrible person. But you can’t help loving me.” Yes, she’ll shoot you in the head if you’re inconvenient, but she’ll feel really bad about it, so that’s okay. And if you like the Butterfly Stomp short, the story continues in the novel Butterfly Stomp Waltz.

Between the two, you’ll have enough fun reading to round out your summer nicely. Enjoy!

“Absolute FreeBSD 3rd Edition” update

I’d like to have the third edition of Absolute FreeBSD in print by May 2018, for BSDCan. After discussions with No Starch Press, to make that happen I must complete the first draft before November 2017.

That’s four months.

To complicate things further, in those four months I have four weeks of traveling: BSDCam, EuroBSDCon, and a writing business workshop.

So, three months.

My best guess is that I have to write about 15,000 words a week to make that happen. Call it 3,000 words a working day. At my nonfiction cruising speed of 500 words an hour, that’s roughly 30 hours a week, or six hours a day. Provided nothing goes wrong.

I can only maintain that nonfiction speed if I write fiction as well. Without it, my nonfiction speed drops to about 200 words/hour. So I’ll keep doing 90 minutes a day on “Terrapin Sky Tango,” the sequel to Butterfly Waltz Stomp.

That’s 7.5 hours a day.

Plus I have a business to run. I have to assemble the “Core Concepts of ZFS” tutorial for EuroBSDCon. (If you’re in Europe and want to see me, this is your chance until some time in the 2020s.) I need to spend 2-3 nights a week on my martial arts practice.

The upshot is, you won’t see me around much until November.

The good news is, I’ve done the hardest parts of AF3e first. And I’ll squeeze in some time on weekends and evenings to get ahead.

But for now: book!

BSDCan 2017 Auction Swag

BSDCan ends each year with a charity auction. This year is no exception.

I’ll be bringing some unique items for the auction. First, a few things made by my wife. We’ll have a Relayd & Httpd Mastery keychain.

A FreeBSD church key. Yes, she made all the beads. They’re real glass. This is probably decorative use only.

A Puffy wine stopper. Again, all the beads are hand-made. Puffy is real glass.

SemiBUG is donating a Detroit sampler pack. By SemiBUG, of course, I mean me. Because my missus has all the hands-on talent in the family, and I thought I should bring something too. In any case, come by and visit our BUG some time.

Finally, I will have a small selection of 100% authentic, hand-crafted, truly bootleg Groff the BSD Goat merchandise. Get a piece while you can, I expect it to go fast.

See you all next week!

“Relayd and Httpd Mastery,” both the good and the bad

I finally have my grubby mitts on a print copy of Relayd and Httpd Mastery.

The cover is nice, but the inside has a couple problems. Specifically the TLS chapter.

I wrote this book on -current. Shortly after I finished writing about TLS, though, the -b flag for automatic backup was removed.

Someone pointed this out to me before I went to print. In my daftness, though, I misunderstood. (“Yes, yes, I know about the -b flag, what’s the problem?”)

There’s also a couple of other minor things–they changed acme-client -N to -D, and I missed one in an example. A couple sentences no verb.

These are embarrassing, but not critical if you know about them. The total error is about a third of a page, which isn’t bad for a 235-page book.

I’ve corrected the book. All ebook vendors have updated versions as of yesterday morning. Print versions ordered now should also be correct.

That leaves me responsible for three problems, though.

First, there’s no way I can have corrected print versions before BSDCan. It’s just not physically possible. So the copies I’ll have at BSDCan will have the error.

Second, 18 people ordered the print copy before I caught the error. Those 18 people are clearly both hard-core OpenBSD fans, and my hard-core fans. They are the people it’s most important I keep happy. It’s fully understandable that you’d want a correct book. If you desire a corrected print version, contact me. I’ll send you my mailing address. Mail me your incorrect book, and I’ll send you a correct one.

Yes, I’ll lose money on that exchange. Yes, I’m hoping most of you will decide to keep your “Special January 2017 OpenBSD-current Collectors Edition of Relayd and Httpd Mastery.” Yes, I’m hoping possession of that print book will turn into something that gives you hard-core bragging rights.

But you 18 folks? The ones who rushed out to get the book immediately upon release? You’re the ones I must keep happy.

So: the exchange is yours upon request.

If you’re one of those folks, do NOT return the book to Amazon! The Big A will put the incorrect copy on the shelf and ship it to someone else.

Third? Sponsors. Sponsors will get a copy of the good version. This means I must ship them after BSDCan.

Did this happen because I’m self-published? Nope. I submit the first sentence of Absolute OpenBSD as a counter-example.

Most of the time I don’t worry much about errata. I fix urgent daftness and move on. This one is particularly egregious and notably embarrassing, though–especially as it was pointed out to me before release.

The top of page 86 now reads:

find it easiest to create the backup file when create or renew a certificate. Back up the cert.pem, chain.pem, and fullchain.pem files. As I name each certificate file after the site, I can put all the backups in a location like /etc/ssl/acme/backups. Your update shell script needs something like this after a renewal.

DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S)
cp /etc/ssl/acme/www3/www3.crt /etc/ssl/acme/backup/www3.crt.$DATE
cp /etc/ssl/acme/www3/www3.chain.pem /etc/ssl/acme/backup/www3.chain.pem.$DATE
cp /etc/ssl/acme/www3/www3.fullchain.pem /etc/ssl/acme/backup/www3.fullchain.pem.$DATE

Yes, anyone who bought the book could script better in their sleep. But the screwup is my fault and my responsibility.

“Relayd and Httpd Mastery” is out!

I’m pleased to say that Relayd and Httpd Mastery is now available in print and ebook.

Sponsors should be able to log into their accounts and download the updated book.

I don’t have a print copy of the book in my hands yet, but they’re on the way. Unless something goes wrong, I’ll a) have copies mailed to all the print sponsors before I leave for BSDCan, and b) have a few copies for BSDCan.

Now to put in some quantity time for the third edition of Absolute FreeBSD before BSDCan…

Conferences and Traveling

obsolete: now on its own page.

If you want to ask me to come talk at your con, event, or show, that’s cool. I like to meet my readers. Here are things I consider when you ask me to show up and talk. This stuff only applies if you ask me to come as a speaker: if I decide to come to your event without an invite, that’s on me.

I get enough invites that I could speak at a different conference every week. Even tiny conferences meet these requirements without trouble. Don’t bother telling me your conference should be an exception: it is not.

Everything is political, and everything is financial. I don’t consider either more important than the other. But let’s talk money first.

For me to speak at your event, I need you to cover my expenses: notably, travel, lodging, and meals. I’m not going to fly across the country on my own dime to give your keynote. Yes, I’ve been asked to do that.

Put me in the bouncy back of a plane and I’ll be nauseous for three days. (I can’t do roller coasters or fast elevators either.) Me being ill at your event is counterproductive. I don’t need first class airfare, or even business class, but basic economy “condemned prisoner on way to execution” class doesn’t work. I need on the wings or in front, preferably on the aisle. Regular economy is fine, although if the carrier has one of those $100 upgrades for Less Torment Economy I’d really prefer that if I’m flying long across the country. And I need transportation between the airport, hotel, and event.

I need a quiet hotel room. Young Lucas didn’t mind sleeping on someone’s couch, but I’ve hit the age where “sleeping wrong” is a thing.

I’m fine with hotel continental breakfasts, sandwiches for lunch, and modest dinners. Mind you, it’s a shame to visit cattle country and not get a good steak, or a coast and not have seafood, so one meal like that is nice.

Want to get on my good side? Arrange a couple 20-oz bottles of cold Coke Zero per day.

For that, I’ll do one prepared talk a day and sit on as many panel discussions as you want. I can do a second standalone talk in a day, if it’s a talk I’ve given before. I also promise not to hide in my hotel room between talks.

I make my living off my writing. If I’m speaking at your event, I’d like the chance to sell a few books. I don’t sell near enough to cover a flight, but it generally covers airport parking and incidentals. I’d need a spot to stash a suitcase of books between talks.

For the political side:

Your event needs a harassment policy. It needs to be obvious. You need to enforce it. If there haven’t been complaints about your group, that’s fine. If someone’s upset with your group, well, that happens. If you had complaints, instituted a policy in response, and have improved, that’s okay–we all learn. But if your group or the organizers have a history of letting harassment slide, or if the event organizers of have a history of sexual and/or racial harassment, then I’m going to pass. I pretty much agree with Scalzi’s post on his policy.

This is not about “safe spaces” or “special snowflakes.” This is about me and my readers not being subjected to creepy jerks. (The word I want isn’t “jerks,” but I’m trying to keep this post G-rated.) I already loathe traveling. I’m not going to go somewhere that welcomes jerks, because jerks go where they are permitted.

If you don’t identify your organizers, I’m going to ask. Save everyone a round of email and post them on your web site. Be proud of what you’re doing, even if you’ve never done it before.

If I’m aware of your event and decide to show up on my own, as a guest, of course I’ll pay my own way. But I’ll check for your harassment policy. If you don’t have one, or if you have a bad history in that regard, I won’t attend. And you’ll never know.

Am I saying you have to have a harassment policy? Nope. I’m saying I will choose to not attend your event unless you have one.

And I’m not interested in debating this policy here, or anywhere online. Talk to me in meatspace about it.

Self-Imposed Split Personality

Pardon the long post, but this might both save me some time and help other authors in a similar position. (I’m not aware of any others in my position, but I’m sure they exist.) Also, I try to make data-driven decisions rather than jumping on the Latest Bandwagon, which is notoriously difficult in a business like publishing that provides very little data.

I’ve been writing under the name Michael W Lucas for decades now. I used that name on the very first book that I published. For my first tech book I used Michael Lucas, but changed it immediately afterwards because I couldn’t compete.

A few years ago, I split into Michael W Lucas (tech) and Michael Warren Lucas (fiction). Publishing in two wildly different fields confused both readers and Amazon’s recommendation engine. While my long-term plan involves reducing Amazon’s importance as a sales channel, other sites use similar algorithms. And I doubt I’ll ever eliminate outside sales channels–even James Patterson can’t swing that.

So I have to ride the algorithms.

I’ll use Amazon as an example because the public can easily extract data from them. Amazon says “Hey, enough people who bought X also bought Y, so we’ll point that out and try to sell them more stuff.” Observe Amazon’s algorithms in action by using Yasiv’s Also Bought visualization tool. Here’s my Kindle Also Boughts for my nonfiction. Amazon has also noticed that people who buy books on TLS, PGP, ZFS, and PF have bought SSH Mastery.

When someone looks at the entry for, say, Bulletproof SSL and TLS, Amazon shows them an ad for SSH Mastery.

These ads are critical for expanding my readership. Books with incoming links are my best-sellers. While correlation is not causation, from talking to readers and observing my own behavior I’d say they clearly work.

Yasiv also shows that people who buy one of my books have also bought a bunch more of my books. This shows that my writing appeals to a certain group of people. Folks who try one of my books get hooked. Amazon is validating my writer skills here, in graphical form.

Note that the Also Bought recommendation engine clearly splits books by genre. I’m highly confident that my readership includes a bunch of folks who read, say, Peter F Hamilton, John Scalzi, Heinlein, Asimov, and so on. But the recommendation engine mostly chops those things off. You have to sell a whole bunch of stuff to get the recommendation engine to cross genres. My Kindle nonfiction Yasiv graph shows that folks who bought my DNSSEC and Tarsnap books also bought git commit murder, but it’s very much an outlier. It’s even graphed as an outlier.

Now let’s hit the clutch, and look at fiction. My fiction is gaining popularity. Measured in dollars, the sales each month are usually a little better than those beforehand. I write crime thrillers, science fiction, and mystery.

So let’s consider Amazon’s Kindle Also Boughts for my fiction.

This really isn’t good.

My fiction exists as a little island. My books all connect to each other. People who like my books tend to buy several. Once my audience finds me, they stay. My readers also like Octavia Butler and Charlie Stross, though, so I’m reasonably confident in the writing itself. Those links are one-way, however: people leave my island for Stross, but never return.

(Note that not all of my books are here. If I wanted to be really depressed, I’d check out the Also Boughts for the latest Montague Portal novel… but I don’t want to be really depressed, so I won’t. Plus, reader reaction to that book was excellent, so Amazon’s recommendation engine can go jump off a bridge.)

Without those incoming Also Boughts, there’s no career here.

I’ve been doing a bunch of reading on how Also Boughts work. Amazon divides the Also Boughts by consistency of readership. I write in multiple genres. An author name with fewer sales and fewer titles but greater consistency of readership gets recommended to other readers. An author name with more titles but inconsistent readership… does not.

Some writers have recommended concentrating on one genre. I understand their reasons for that recommendation, but in my case that’s not likely to happen. The stories I want to write do not respect genre. The book I’m writing now deals with today’s human trafficking, and I don’t care to thinly disguise the topic to write it as science fiction. And there’s no way to write my SF as crime novels.

Fiction readers rarely cross genres. A few do–I have a few loyal fans who read damn near everything I write. (Hi, Meg and Kurt!) I love those readers. But they’re the exception.

So it seems I need to split my name again.

I’m not looking forward to self-imposed multiple personality disorder. It’s a bunch of work. There’s a whole mess of covers to redo, not to mention a whole mess of ebook reformatting. I’m equipped to do it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s tedious grunt labor that I’d rather not repeat.

Which means I only want to do it once.

Rather than going with my gut, I’m requesting input from other writers who’ve been here.

The obvious split seems to be mystery & crime thrillers under one name, and the SF under another name.

I can also argue against that, though. The Immortal Clay books have very little cross-readership with the Montague Portal stories. This is not surprising: the Immortal Clay books are post-apocalyptic “Carpenter’s The Thing, but after we lose”, while the Montague Portal tales are comparatively lighthearted “let’s explore the multiverse!” romps. Similarly, git commit murder is a cozy mystery, while Butterfly Stomp Waltz and the forthcoming sequel (Terrapin Sky Tango) are crime thrillers–technically mysteries, yes, but mysteries full of blood and booms and bad language. Decidedly not cozy, if you get my drift.

But splitting into four names? Oh, come on now. Each name imposes overhead. Never mind that if my fiction takes off, I plan to write an urban theological fantasy series. (Working title: you should have learned. A couple of you probably got a funny look right there, so for you few: yes, it means exactly what you think it means.)

So I think it’s two names, plus a possible third later on.

The SF would stay under my name. The biggest reason being that it’s a suitable SF author name, while modern thriller authors who have started writing recently have shorter, punchier names. Yes, James Patterson is a long name–but he’s been around for decades. Today’s perfect thriller author name is something like, say, Brad Thor, Lee Child, Ben Coes, or Dale Brown. Single-syllable names. (Of these, I’d say Brad Thor is the best–a metal rivet and a Norse god? How much tougher do you want?) Slightly longer names like Tom Clancy and Stuart Woods also do pretty well. No, I’m not saying that these authors did well because of their names. But the names of the authors of these kinds of books in the trad published world fit into a type, and if I’m going to switch my name I want it to fit that type as well as possible.

git commit murder is something of an odd duck. The target audience is people who read my nonfiction. It’s probably going to stay under the Michael Warren Lucas brand, simply for the name recognition of “he’s in our tribe.” That book will never appeal to the Traditional Cozy Reader, and that’s okay.

I’d like to continue using https://mwl.io as a generic author landing page that branches out to specific sites for all of my names. Middle initials are not punchy. So let’s go with initials of M and L.

But what name? The first names Mack and Mick appeal to me. A surname, though? I could go for a variant on my name, like Luck. Perhaps something ominous, such as Last?

So, for those author sorts still reading this:

1) Is splitting my name a waste of time?
2) Should I split the names a different way?
3) Suggestions for a good M.L. thriller pseudonym?

Web Presence Redesign

Sometimes success is a problem. I should be glad I’ve hit this point. Instead, I’m annoyed at having to take time off from productive work to shuffle web sites. I only want to do this once, so I’m presenting my plan here. My readers are perhaps the most highly qualified people in the world to punch holes it. Also, writing it down will help me figure out the details.

I need to redesign my “web presence.” (Ugh. Hate that term.)

As an author, I present two faces to the world: nonfiction author Michael W Lucas, and fiction author Michael Warren Lucas.

I have two different names because while my readers might not care terribly much about genre, they do care about fiction versus nonfiction. My tech readers don’t want to see my novels (with some exceptions), while the fiction readers find the tech baffling (as they should). Very few people are cross-spectrum Lucas fans.

So, different names and different web sites. I make no pretense that these names are two different people.

I have a generic landing page for people interested in both sides. That URL is short enough to type on a cellphone. The page is kind of clunky, but I’m working on a modern-looking version.

I also have a blog. Which is the site you’re reading now.

My tech author page has most of my information, as that’s where most of my readership has been. The fiction audience is growing, however. I’ve heard from more than one fiction reader that the nonfiction site alienates them. (I understand them perfectly. Computer technology alienates most people.)

So I need to rearrange. And I want to do it in such a way that it reduces information duplication and maintenance of text. Plus, I only want to do it once. So, here’s the plan. Please save me labor and punch holes in it before I do the work.

The blog stays right where it is. Too many incoming links.

Move the following from the nonfiction site to the landing site:

  • all of the autobiography pages
  • about, contact
  • make the FAQ a top-level entity
  • “support an author”, but link to it

Move the following from the fiction site to the landing site:

  • the contact form (integrate with the contact info from nonfiction site)

On the nonfiction site:

  • make the “talks” page a top-level menu item
  • Rebrand the site as “The books of Michael W Lucas” with “About the Author” linking to the generic site

On the fiction site:

  • Rebrand the site as “The books of Michael Warren Lucas” with “About the Author” pointing to the generic site.
  • Link to the “Support an Author”

As far as the new landing site goes: I really must thank Lucy Snyder for letting me stealborrow take inspiration and configurations from her WordPress setup.

So, all my readers who are experts in information management: where did I screw up? What optimization opportunities am I missing here? What am I going to regret months or years from now? Other than being an author, of course.

Experimental Price Cuts

I spent last weekend at Penguicon, doing a whole bunch of panels and presentations as well as talking with readers and hobnobbing with my fellow ink-stained wretches authors. As a result of those discussions, I’m trying something new (to me). I’m slashing my fiction prices.

Novels are down to $2.99. Yes, even the brand new git commit murder. Immortal Clay is down to $0.99, because it’s the first in a series.

Novellas are down to $1.99.

Short stories are all 99 cents.

US Kindle users can check my Amazon listing, while others can hit my fiction web site.

How long will this last?

I don’t know. It’s an experiment. Overwhelmingly, the authors I spoke with told me I would make it up on volume. I expect this stunt to slash my fiction income. Much as with my initial experiment in self-publishing, I would be delighted to be proven wrong. I’ll give this not less than 30 days.

Am I likely to try this with my nonfiction? No. The maximum potential audience for a book on PAM or a BSD is much, much, MUCH lower than that for a novel, even a novel in a low-selling genre such as SF.